As a writer, I write to see. If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write. It's a process of discovery.

I've never written anything that hasn't been in my mind for a long time - seven or eight years.

The rosary was said every evening. I always liked that sentence about the medieval Churches, that they were the Bibles of the poor. The Church was my first book and I would think it is still my most important book.

I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

I think there's a great difference in consciousness in that same way in that when we're young we read books for the story, for the excitement of the story - and there comes a time when you realise that all stories are more or less the same story.

I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor.